scene I drew; cursed Yan Bol and his crew in the language of Beach

Street; started out of his chair to grasp the lady Aurora by the hand on my relating her share in the recovery of the brig. And then he became a strict man of business, his jolly face hardening to the rise and pressure of his old smuggling instincts when I spoke of the chests of dollars in the lazarette and asked him to advise me how, when, and where to secretly convey them ashore.

“Let’s have a look at ’em, Bill,” said he. The excitement was gone out of him; he was as cool as ever he had been in the most artful and desperate of his midnight jobs. I took him into the lazarette and between us we handled a chest of about three thousand dollars to test its weight. He then said--as quietly as though his talk was of empty casks and “dead marines”--“The money must be got ashore to-night. It mustn’t remain aboard after to-night.”

“How shall I go to work?”

“Leave that to me.”

“Who’ll receive the cases, uncle?”

“I will, Bill.”

“Sketch me your idea that I may see my way.”

“I’ll go ashore now,” said he, “and make all necessary arrangements. Keep aboard yourself and don’t let any of your people leave the brig. Tell them we’ll pay ’em off at my house to-morrow. Destroy all your papers--see to that, Bill. The moon’s old and nigh wore out--it’ll be a dark night, raining and squally, I hope. You’ll have a lugger alongside of you when it comes dark. She’ll hail you. Her name’ll be the _Seamen’s Friend_, the name of the man that hails you, Jarvie Files. Trust him up to the hilt, Bill, and leave him to discharge ye. He knows the ropes. Afore midnight them chests, to the bottom dollar, ’ll be in my cellars.”

“When do I come ashore?”

“To-morrow. Quite coolly, Bill. Come along with your men and bring ’em to my house, where the money in English gold for paying ’em off ’ll be ready.”

“And what’s to become of this brig?”

“How many anchors do ye hold by?”

“One, uncle.”

“Moor her, Bill. You’ve got a snug berth. She’ll want a caretaker till that there Mynheer Tulp arrives and settles up. She’s his property. And the sooner Tulp arrives the better for all parties.”

He was about to make his way out of the lazarette.

“There is the Spanish lady,” said I. “Will you take her ashore and find her a home in your house until she’s fetched? I’d sooner see her with you than at an inn. She has a tongue. Gratitude will keep her quiet, I hope, but she _might_ talk.”

“If you’re afraid of her, aren’t ye afraid of the men?”

“No. The men haven’t any settled notions on the subject of the silver cargo. They want to get home, and up at Whitby they may talk if they please. The lad Jimmy will hold his jaw. I’ve promised to take him into my service. He’s a good lad.”

Without further speech my uncle got out of the lazarette, and after waiting to see me put the hatch on and secure it, he stepped up to the lady Aurora, and in his homely manner, that nevertheless borrowed a sort of grace from the warmth of his heart, he begged her to make use of his house until she heard from her friends. She thanked him, gazed at me with a short-lived look of confusion, and said:

“Until I hear from Mr. Maxwell, until I receive communications from Madrid, I am very poor. I wish not to part with these rings,” said she, looking down upon her hands; “I wish not to remove them; and my earrings,” continued she, with a shake of her head, “would not bring me nearly money enough to buy me what I want.”

“Leave that to me, ma’am,” said my uncle; “name your figure when we get ashore. There’s no luggage, I suppose?”

“Nothing that I care to take,” she answered. “Captain Round, I will ask you to land me in some secret place, as if I was contraband, and show me how to reach your house by the back ways. I do not love to be stared at, and many mocking eyes will rest upon me if I appear in this costume in your public streets.”

“You shan’t meet a soul,” answered my uncle, “if it isn’t a boatman too bleared with ale to observe more than that you’re a woman.”

She put on her hat and jacket, then stood a moment looking a slow farewell round her; her eyes met mine, and she turned a shade pale, as though to an emotion to which she could not or would not give expression.

“I’ll not say good-by, Señor Fielding,” said she, giving me her hand.

“No; we shall meet again to-morrow, I hope.”

The three of us went on deck. My uncle called his boat alongside; Miss Aurora and he entered her, and they shoved off. I leaned upon the rail, watching them as they rowed ashore. The boat made for the beach, a little to the northward of Sandown Castle. There was no play or surf to render the landing inconvenient. My uncle helped the girl out of the boat, and they walked off across the sand hills--those same sand hills which had provided me with my horrible experience of the gibbet.

But the gibbet was gone; the summer sun was shining upon the grassy billows of sand. Afar, on the confines of that hilly waste, were many trees, with a single church steeple among them--the shore sign of the old town of Sandwich. Over the bows ran the white, low terraces of the Ramsgate cliffs, soaring as they rounded out of the bay, and gathering a milkier softness as they rose. Abreast was the yellow line of the Goodwins, and yonder on the quarter stretched Deal Beach, rich with the various colors of many boats hauled high and dry. A row of seaward-facing houses flanked that beach; I could see the corner of the alley where I was gripped by the press-gang, and memories of after-days swarmed into my head.

But there was work to be done; I broke away from my idle musings, and ordered the men to moor ship in obedience to my uncle’s instructions. Cable was veered out, and a second anchor let go. I had found a bag of thirty-two guineas and some silver in Greaves’ cabin after my poor friend’s death. I used this money to settle with the two fishermen, and sent them ashore. I then hailed a galley, and dispatched her to Deal for such a supply of fresh meat and vegetables and ale as would give all hands of us a good dinner and supper, and when the punt was gone I called the crew aft, told them that I’d take them ashore next day, and pay them off in English money at my uncle’s house near Sandwich; I also thanked them for their good behavior during the long passage from the Southern Ocean, and shook each man by the hand as a friend who had served me very honestly at a time when my necessities were great.

The wind shifted during the day, and a number of ships brought up in the Downs. A few small craft dropped anchor near the brig.

I heeded them not, nor the bigger vessels beyond. I feared only the arrival of a man-of-war, and the being boarded by her for men. In the afternoon a fine ship-sloop passed through the Gulls heading west; I watched her with the steadfast eye of a cat, dreading to behold her tall breasts of topsails suddenly shiver to the wind, her loftier canvas vanish, and her anchor fall. She foamed onward, heeling a bright line of copper off the Foreland, and vanished round that giant elbow of chalk with her yards bracing up, and her bowlines tricing out for a “ratch” down Channel.

When the evening came along, the dusk was deep but clear. There was no wet; the breeze was about south--a steady, warm wind--a six-knot breeze. The scene of Downs was very dark; you would think it black by contrast with the picture it makes by night in these times. Ships then showed no riding lights. Here and there a lantern gleamed from the end of a spritsail yard, from the extremity of a mizzen-boom. The Goodwin Sands were lampless, save in the far north, where burnt the spark first kindled by that worthy Quaker of North Shields, Henry Taylor. The lights of the little town of Ramsgate glowed soft and faint upon the face of the dark heap of cliff afar; the lights along Deal Beach twinkled windily. It was a very proper night for our adventure--dark, and but little sea, and wind enough.

Shortly after six bells--eleven by the clock--I spied a shadow to windward, drawing out of the south. The dusky phantom came along slowly, as though she took a wary look at the several little craft she passed. She shaped herself out upon the darkness presently--a large Deal lugger. When she was under our stern she hailed. I, who had been impatiently awaiting the arrival of this vessel, sprang on to the taffrail and sang out:

“What lugger’s that?”

“The _Seamen’s Friend_,” was the reply.

“Who is the man that answers?” I called.

“Jarvie Files.”

“Right y’are!” I cried.

The lugger’s helm was put down, and she came alongside. One of my Whitby men was on the forecastle, keeping what we term at sea an “anchor watch.” I told him to remain forward.

“There are men enough,” said I, “belonging to the lugger to answer my turn.”

The others and the Kanaka were in the forecastle asleep. Jimmy was awake in the cabin, where the lamp was alight. Several figures came over the side, and one of them, catching sight of me, said:

“Are you Mr. Fielding?”

“I am.”

“I’m from Capt’n Round, sir. The coast’ll be clear, I allow; but we’ll have to look sharp. Where’s the stuff?”

“Follow me,” said I.

This Jarvie Files, and, perhaps, five others--men heavily booted, with great shawls round their necks and fur caps drawn down to their eyebrows--tramped after me into the cabin. Lanterns were ready. I showed them the hatch of the lazarette; and, in about half an hour’s time, they had cleared out the last case, had stowed it in the lugger alongside, and were hoisting their sail. Their dispatch was wonderful; but they were of a race of men who had been disciplined into an exquisite agility in the art of dishing the revenue by the barbarous severity of the laws against smuggling in that age. I watched the big boat haul her sheet aft and stand away with her head to the eastward. She blended quickly with the obscurity and I lost her. I guessed she was feigning a “ratch” toward the Ostend coast, to dodge any shore-going eye that may have rested upon her, and that presently she would be shifting her helm for Pegwell Bay, where carts waited to convey the silver to my uncle’s house.

I went into the cabin when I lost sight of her, lay down, and slept very soundly and dreamt happily. I was too tired to rejoice; otherwise I should have mixed a tumbler of spirits and lighted a pipe, and enjoyed the luxury of a long contemplation of the successful issue of Tulp’s expedition.

I awoke in the gray of the dawn, and, going on deck, found promise of a fine day. I searched the shore and beach, down in the bay and about the river, with the brig’s telescope, but nothing showed that was to be likened to the lugger of last night. After breakfast, the Whitby men came aft and said they’d be glad to go ashore soon. They wanted to get to Ramsgate, where they might find a coalman bound to their port. I answered that I could not leave the brig until a caretaker arrived, and that there was no use in their going ashore unless I went with them to pay them off at my uncle’s. However, half an hour after this a punt, with a big lug, put off from Deal Beach, and blew alongside with five men in her, two of whom came on board and said that they had received instructions from Captain Round to take charge of the vessel while she lay at anchor.

“All right,” said I, “you are the men I have been waiting for,” and I told the Whitby fellows and the Kanaka to collect their traps and get into the boat. I then took Jimmy into my cabin and gave him several parcels of Greaves’ effects to convey to the punt. All that belonged to Greaves I took; I cleared the cabin of nautical instruments, books, chronometers, and the rest, and left nothing but dirt and dust for old Tulp. I then got into the boat with Jimmy, and we headed for the beach.

When Miss Aurora went ashore her gaze had been bent landward; she never once turned to take a farewell look at the old brig that had saved her life. I could not blame her. She had had enough of the little ship. For my part, I could look at nothing else as we rowed to the beach. I had not been out of the brig since I had landed on the island to get the dollars out of the cave. For many long months had the _Black Watch_ been my home, the theater of the most dramatic of all the passages of my life; she had earned me a fortune; she had rescued me from drowning; I could not take a farewell look without affection and regret. She sat very light, and in her faint rolls hove out a little show of grass; but her copper was cleaner than I had supposed it. Her sides were worn and rusty, her rigging slack, her masts grimy, her whole appearance that of a vessel which had encountered and victoriously survived some very fierce and frightful usage in distant seas. I kept my gaze fastened on her till the keel of the punt drove on to the beach.

The sailors and the Kanaka handed their chests over to the landlord of an ale-house for safe keeping; I then gave each man, and drank myself, a pint of beer, after which we trudged off toward my uncle’s house. We talked merrily as we went; our hearts were filled with the delights of the scenes and sights of the summer land; our salted nostrils swelled large to the sweetness of the haystacks and the aromas of the little farmyards and orchards we tramped past; no man would smoke, that he might breathe purely.

My uncle awaited us; my aunt gave me such a hug as the Prodigal Son would have got from his mother had his father been out of sight. I asked after Madam Aurora; she had driven to Deal that morning to shop, and, as she had borrowed twenty pounds, her shopping might probably run into some hours. It was one o’clock; a hearty meal had been prepared in the kitchen for the men, and while they ate I dined with my uncle and aunt off a roast leg of pork in the parlor adjacent, where we could hear the fellows’ gruff voices and Jimmy’s bleating laugh. The chests had been securely landed, Uncle Joe told me, and safely housed in his cellar. The silver made five loads. They asked me to tell the whole story of the discovery of those dollars over again, and my aunt put many questions about the Señorita Aurora, who, she declared, was the finest, most elegant, and genteel lady she had ever seen in her life.

When we and the men had dined, my uncle called them into the parlor and took a receipt from each of them for three hundred and fifty dollars, which he paid down in English gold. They thanked him for his hospitality, begged their humble respects to the lady Aurora, wished me many blessings, and with some hair-pulling and scrapes and bows got out of the room and went their ways. I never saw or heard of those honest fellows again, though I learnt that on this same day, after leaving us, they and the Kanaka took a boat and sailed across to Ramsgate, where, no doubt, they found a north-country collier bound to their parts.

Jimmy had brought Captain Greaves’ belongings under his arm and on his back, the others carrying a few of the parcels among them. My uncle and I overhauled the poor fellow’s effects, and then sat down to talk over his will, to write a letter to Mynheer Tulp, and to consider how we were to convert what silver belonged to me and to Greaves into British currency.

“First of all, Bill,” said my uncle, “we’ll knock off a letter to Tulp and send it away. Let him fetch his brig and his money; there’ll be more daylight to see by when they’re out of the road.”

So I took a sheet of paper and addressed a letter to Mynheer Bartholomew Tulp at his house in Amsterdam, his residence being known to me through perusal of Greaves’ papers. I stated that the brig _Black Watch_ had arrived in the Downs on the previous day, that her voyage had been successful, that the cargo was housed ashore, and that Greaves had died during the passage home; and I begged Mr. Tulp to lose not a moment in visiting me at my uncle’s house, that he might receive what belonged to him, for peril lurked in the protracted detention of the brig in the Downs. When this letter was written I dispatched it to Sandwich by Jimmy, that it might be transmitted without delay.

“Tulp will take his dollars at his own risk,” said my uncle, blowing out a cloud of smoke; “your own dollars and the silver belonging to Greaves’ll have to be negotiated cautiously; it’s a lot of money to deal with, and it mustn’t be handled in the lump. We’ll have to work by degrees through the money changers; find out several of them in London, and deal with ’em one arter the other at intervals. Then we may make it worth the while of the smugglers, some of my own particular friends, to relieve us of a chest or two. My son-in-law’ll take some; he’s often trading Mediterranean way; but I’m afeared it won’t do, Bill, to trouble the banks; we don’t want any questions to arise. How it might work out as a matter of law I don’t know; safest to look upon these here dollars as run goods and treat ’em accordingly.”

I fully agreed with him, and it was settled that the money should be exchanged in the manner he proposed. We then talked of Greaves’ will. Indeed, we talked of many more things than I can recollect. Nothing, however, could be done until Mynheer Tulp turned up. Every day I boarded the brig and saw that all was right with the dear little ship; and I remember once that while I stood with the lady Aurora and my uncle on Deal Beach, viewing the vessel and recounting our experiences in her yet again, it occurred to me to buy her, to re-equip her, put a good sailor in command of her, and send her away to make a rich voyage for me. I smiled when I had thus thought; it had been Miss Aurora’s notion, and had she consented to marry me I daresay I should have bought the brig. But I said to myself, “No”; the brig is not Tulp’s to sell; I must deal with her owner, whose curiosity might prove inconveniently penetrating; I have my money and I’ll keep it; and so I dismissed the _Black Watch_ as a venture out of my head.

One day--I think it was about a week after I had written to Amsterdam--I returned with my lady Aurora to my uncle’s house after a morning’s stroll about Deal. I heard voices in the parlor; Miss Aurora went upstairs.

“Who is here?” said I to the old chap who opened the door.

“Mr. Tulp, from Amsterdam, sir,” he answered.

On this I knocked upon the door and entered the parlor.

Had I lived with Mynheer Tulp a month I could not have carried in my head a more striking image of the man than my fancy had painted out of Greaves’ brief description of him.

He was a little, withered old fellow, a mere trifle of months, I daresay, on this side seventy; nose long and hooked, face hollow and yellow, eyes small, black, and down-looking, though often a leary lift of the lids sent a piercer at the person he talked to; he wore a wig, and was dressed in the fashion of the close of last century. He was the man I had dreamt of--the substance of the phantom I had beheld when I looked at poor Greaves, and wondered whether his dollar-ship was a dream or not.

My uncle was red in the face and was talking loudly when I entered.

“So! Und dis vhas Mr. Fielding?” said Mynheer Tulp standing up and extending his hand. “Vell, I vhas glad to see you.”

He uttered even this commonplace slowly and cautiously as though he feared his tongue.

“Now, Bill,” cried my uncle, “I want you to show Greaves’ bond to Mr. Tulp; for he says you aren’t entitled to more than your wages--not even to them as a matter of law, seeing you wasn’t shipped by him.”

“I tink you vill find dot right,” said Mynheer Tulp.

I carried Greaves’ bond, as well as his will, in my pocket; I placed the bond or agreement upon the table, and Mynheer Tulp, picking it up, put on a large pair of spectacles and read it through.

“Dis vhas of no use,” said he.

“We’ll see,” said my uncle.

“Understand me, Mr. Fielding,” continued the little Dutchman. “I don’t mean to say dot you have not acted very vell, und dot you vhas not entitled to a handsome reward, vhich certainly you shall have; but vhen you talk to me of dirty odd tousand dollars--six tousand pounds of English money----” he grinned hideously and shrugged his shoulders.

“What would you consider a handsome reward?” said I.

“You vhas second mate. I learn from your uncle dot your life vhas safed by my brig. Should I sharge you mit safing your life? No. But if I vhas you I should consider der safing of my life as handsome a reward as I had der right to expect for any services afterward performed. But mit you, my good young man, I goes much further. You have navigated the brig safely home mit my money, und I say help yourself, my boy, to five hundred pounds of der dollars before I takes them.”

“Before you takes ’em!” cried my uncle. “You’ll need every line-of-battle ship that Holland possesses to enable you to catch even a glimpse of the dollars afore all things are settled to my nephew Bill’s satisfaction.”

“Vhat vhas your name again, sir?”

“Captain Joseph Round.”

“You hov der looks of an honest man, Captain Round. You vould not rob me?”

“Not a ha-penny leaves this house,” said my uncle, “until Bill here has taken his share according to your skipper’s bond, and until he’s deducted the money that the captain has left by will, lawfully signed and witnessed.”

“I likes to see dot vill,” said Mynheer Tulp, speaking always very composedly, and occasionally snapping a look under his eyelids at one or the other of us.

I put the will on the table. He picked it up and read it. When he had read it he again grinned hideously, and said:

“Your name vhas Villiam Fielding?”

“Yes.”

“Und you benefit under dis vill to der amount of von tousand pounds?”

“Yaw,” said I.

“Und you vitness der vill dot vhas to benefit you? Shentlemen, it vhas not vorth the paper it vhas wrote on;” and he threw the will upon the table.

“It matters not one jot,” said I, who, as I had never attached the least significance to the legality of this sailor-made will, was in no wise astonished, because I reckoned old Tulp perfectly right. “About forty-two thousand pounds’ worth of the thirteen tons of dollars I have brought home for you at the risk of my life I keep, Mynheer. D’ye understand me? I _keep_, I say,” and I repeated the sentence thrice, while I approached him by a couple of strides. “Seven thousand are mine; the rest will go to the erection of a church.”

“Der money,” said Mynheer Tulp without irritation, though his yellow complexion was a shade paler than it had been a little while before, “vhas left to der Church of Englandt?”

“You have read it,” said I.

“Now, shentlemen,” continued the little Dutchman, “dere vhas a Church of Englandt, certainly; but dere vhas no Church of Englandt dot a man can leaf money to.”

“You know a sight too much,” shouted my uncle. “The money’s in my cellar, and there it stops till you settle.”

“Der Church of Englandt,” said Mynheer Tulp, “vhas a single body dot has no property. You cannot leaf money to der Church of Englandt. Dot alone makes my poor stepson’s vill nooll und void.”

“The money remains where it is----” began my uncle.

“Do you allow,” I interrupted, “that Captain Greaves has a right to his share?”

“Do I allow it? Do I allow it?”

“You allow it. He could, therefore, do what he likes with his share?”

“Dot vhas right.”

“Do you know that he wished a church to be built as a memorial to his mother, who was your wife, I believe?”

“Dot vhas very beautiful. But he vhas dead, und dot vill vhas not vorth the ink it took to write out. I vhas next of kin, und I takes my poor stepson’s share.”

When he had said this, my uncle and I spoke together; and from this moment began an altercation which I should need a volume to embody. Tulp lost his temper; my uncle roared at him; I, too, being furious with the meanness of the wretched little beast, often found myself bawling as though I were in a gale of wind. Tulp’s threats flew fast and furious. Uncle Joe snapped his fingers under his long nose, and defied him in a voice hoarse and failing with exertion. I began to see the idleness and the absurdity of all this, and, throwing open the parlor door, I exclaimed:

“Mr. Tulp, get you back to Amsterdam, and there sit and reflect. When you come into our way of thinking, write; and then fetch your money. Go to law, if you please. The Spanish consignees of the dollars will thank you.”

The perspiration poured from the little man’s face, and he trembled violently. His yellow complexion under the pressure of his temper, which often forced his voice into a shriek, had changed into several dyes of green and sulphur, like that of one in a fit. He stared wildly about him in search of his strange little hat, which, however, he forgot he had already snatched up and was holding.

“You’ll have to bear a hand with your decision,” cried my uncle, whose face looked almost as queer as Tulp’s, with its purple skin and blue lips; “they’re beginning to ask questions about the brig, and if you don’t send for her soon she’ll be _going a-missing_. You know what I mean. The Goodn’s are handy, and my nephew aint going to forfeit his rightful share of the dollars because of _her_. The recovery of this silver is to be more than a salvage job to Bill. There’s nigh upon forty thousand pounds belonging to you a-lying in my cellars, but if ye aren’t quick in fetching it something may happen to oblige me to send all them chests out of my house, and then it’ll be no business of mine to larn what’s become of ’em.”

The little Dutchman, now perceiving that he held his hat, clapped it on his head and ran out of the room.

We heard no more of him that day; though next morning the old longshoreman who waited upon my uncle said that he had seen the little man pass the house, pause, walk up and down irresolutely, then hurry away in the direction of Sandwich. As I could not get to hear of him at Deal I guessed he lurked in Sandwich, and caused Jimmy to make inquiries, which resulted in the discovery that Mynheer Tulp was stopping at the Fleur de Lys Hotel. Three days after he had visited my uncle he wrote to offer me half a ton of the silver, worth something over three thousand pounds, on condition that my uncle peaceably surrendered the rest of the money to him, and assisted him to convey it to Amsterdam. I answered this by repeating my uncle’s threat, that if very shortly he did not agree to my terms the silver would be removed, my uncle would have no knowledge of its whereabouts, and I myself would go abroad.

On the morning following the dispatch of this missive, Miss Aurora received a letter; she read it and uttered a loud shriek, fell off her chair at the breakfast table round which we were seated, and lay upon the floor in a dead swoon. We thought she had died, and our fright was extreme. We picked her up and placed her upon a sofa, and went to work to recover her. Presently her sighs and moans satisfied us that she was not dead. I glanced at the letter she had received; it was in Spanish. I took the liberty of looking a little closely; it was signed by the Señora de la Cueva.

“She has heard from her mother!” I cried.

She rallied presently, and then followed a scene scarcely less exciting in its way than the shindy that had attended the visit of Mynheer Tulp. Miss Aurora read the letter aloud; and as she read she wept, then burst into fits of laughter, sprang about the room, sat again, continued to read, interrupting herself often by clasping her hands, lifting them to the ceiling, raising her streaming eyes, and thanking the Holy Mother of God for this act of mercy in utterance so impassioned that the like of it was never heard on the stage.

My homely uncle, my yet homelier aunt looked on, scarcely knowing whether to shed tears or to laugh. I was very used to her ladyship’s performances, but there was something in this exhibition of ecstasy that went far beyond anything I had ever beheld in her.

“I rejoice indeed to learn that the señora is safe,” said I.

“Oh, it is a miracle! a miracle!” she cried; and then she wept and laughed and carried on as before, reading aloud in Spanish, and lifting up her eyes in gratitude to the Blessed Virgin.

At last she calmed down, and we conversed without the interruption of emotional outbreaks. Her mother gave no particulars of her deliverance. Mr. Maxwell had received Aurora’s letter; he was ill in his bed, therefore she, the señora, had made her way to London--choosing that port instead of Falmouth, because of the situation of Deal--intending to proceed to Sandwich. But her infirmities had overwhelmed her; the fatigue of the journey had been so great that she was unable to leave her room in London. Her daughter must come to her, and without an instant’s delay.

Within three hours of the receipt of this letter my uncle drove the lady Aurora and me over to Deal, where we saw her safely into the London coach. She had said many kind things to me as we drove to Deal, had taken my hand and pressed it while she thanked me for--but what does it matter how and for what this young lady thanked me? She tried to exact many promises; I made none. Before she stepped into the coach she seized my hand, looked at me hard, and her fine eyes swam. Nothing was said; she took her seat; I and my uncle stood apart waiting while the coachman gathered his reins and prepared for the start. The horses’ heads were then let go, I raised my hat, the coach drove off, and I saw no more of the Señorita Aurora de la Cueva. I say I saw no more of her; in truth, though I once again heard of her, I never received a single line from her. And possibly I should never have heard of her again but for her sending from Madrid a draft for the money she had borrowed from Uncle Joe. She warmly and gracefully thanked Captain and Mrs. Round for their hospitality, begged them to remember her most gratefully to her valued and valiant friend, their nephew, and then, so far as I was concerned, the curtain fell upon her forever.

Mynheer Bartholomew Tulp lurked through a long week at Sandwich. In that week he sent me four letters and each letter contained a fresh proposal. I sent a single reply: that every proposal must be hugely preposterous unless it went on all-fours with Greaves’ will and the agreement with me. He was seen on several occasions in the neighborhood of the house; once Jimmy perceived him looking in at the gate, and supposed that he meant to call; but the little man made off on finding himself observed.

At last, at the expiration of nine or ten days--and this brought us to a Monday--I received a letter from Mynheer Tulp. We were at dinner at the time; my uncle cried out:

“What does he say, Bill? Willing, perhaps, to spring another hundred pound?”

I read the letter aloud; it was well expressed, in good English. Mynheer said he had thought the matter over, and was prepared to settle with me on my own terms. He admitted that I had a right to the share which Van Laar would have received; that Greaves’ signature to the will indicated his wishes as to the disposal of his money, which, of course, he would have received as his share of the venture, had he lived. Would I permit him to call upon me?

I immediately dispatched Jimmy with an answer, and in half an hour’s time the little Dutchman was seated in my uncle’s parlor. He was submissive and, in his way, very apologetic. Yet, though he had come to confirm the terms of his own letter to me, midnight was striking before every point was settled. His rapacity was shark-like. It cost my uncle and me above an hour to make the little man agree to call the value of the dollar four shillings. He disputed long and shrilly over a small share that I claimed for the honest lad Jimmy. He opposed the repayment of the wages of the Whitby men and the Kanaka out of the common stock, as though he believed that my uncle would bear that charge! He was nearly leaving the house on the question of the sum due to Jarvie Files and his men for “running” the dollars. He insisted that my money and Greaves’ should bear a proportion of the loss of the three tons of silver stolen by Yan Bol and his crew. He grew furious when my uncle insisted upon charging him for storage and risk, and thrice in _that_ discussion arose to go.

But by midnight, as I have said, all was settled. He now asked leave to live in the house until he could remove his money to the brig, in which he proposed to sail to Amsterdam, taking with him for a crew the men of the _Seamen’s Friend_. My uncle told him he would be welcome, giving me at the same time a wink of deep disgust at the motive of the old chap’s request. It took us several days to count the dollars, and all the while little Bartholomew Tulp sat looking on. What was left as his share, after deductions, I never heard; it came, I believe, near to fifty thousand pounds. When the division was made he went on board the brig; Jarvie Files and his men carried his chests to the _Black Watch_ in the dead of night, and when, next morning, I went down to the beach to look for the now familiar figure of the brig riding to her two anchors, her place was empty.

* * * * *

This, then, is the story of Greaves’ discovery, and of the part I played in it. Of Yan Bol and his men I heard nothing for eighteen months; I then got a letter from Captain Horsley, dated at Whitby. He had touched at Amsterdam Island, found no signs of Yan Bol and his party, then dug in the place I had indicated without finding the silver. There was no look of the earth having been turned up in that place. A gale of wind blew him off the island; then, a fortnight later, he spoke a ship bound to Sydney, New South Wales, and learnt from her that she had picked up a party of seamen sixty leagues eastward of Amsterdam Island; they were six men, three of them in a dying condition for want of water. He had no doubt, and neither had nor have I, that they were Yan Bol and his mates; but what had the wretches done with the three tons of dollars?

Did I, when we had exchanged the large sum of dollars into English money, did I procure the erection and endowment of a church in accordance with the wishes of Michael Greaves? I answer yes; most piously and anxiously did I fulfill my friend’s dying wish. Will I tell you the name of the church, and where it is situated? No; I have worshiped in it, but I will not tell you its name and where it is situated, because this book is a confession, and I am informed that if the descendants or inheritors of the Spanish consignees, or the owners of the dollars, learnt that a church had been built out of the money, they could and might advance a claim that would give all concerned in that church on this side great trouble.

One little memorial I erected at my own expense; it long stood in the garden of the house in which I dwelt for many years; need I tell you that it was a memorial to my well-beloved, faithful, deeply-mourned Galloon?